Lost empire of the maya 83
sort of black hole—one that sucked in all the cit-
ies around it and created what might have been
a Maya empire. Of course there are still many
questions about the Snakes: how they lived,
ruled, and fought—and even whether some of
them were real.
AT THE END OF THE fifth century, Tikal was
one of the most powerful city-states in the re-
gion. Archaeologists suspect that it held its po-
sition with the help of a much larger city high
in the mountains 650 miles to the west called
Teotihuacan, near today’s Mexico City. For cen-
turies these two cities shaped Maya painting,
architecture, pottery, weapons, and city plan-
ning. But all that changed in the sixth century,
when Teotihuacan disengaged from the Maya
region, leaving Tikal to fend for itself.
Enter the Snakes. No one’s sure where they
came from; there’s no evidence of them ruling
Calakmul before 635. Some experts imagine
them hundreds of years before the Classic era,
moving from place to place, creating one mega-
city after another. But this is guesswork. The
first obvious snake glyphs seem to appear in
Dzibanché, a city in southern Mexico, 80 miles
northeast of Calakmul.
Wherever the Snakes were based, we know
that starting in the early sixth century two suc-
cessive Snake kings recognized that Tikal was
vulnerable and made a bold play for political
control. The first, Stone Hand Jaguar, spent
decades making courtesy calls throughout the
Maya lowlands.
These visits might seem innocuous now—
orchestrating a wedding, playing an ancient
Maya ball game (a sport involving a ball, sever-
al sticks, and stone hoops), perhaps just drop-
ping by to say hello. But this was how conquest
often happened in the Maya world—by offering
gifts, paying respects, building crucial allies.
No one seems to have been better at this than
the Snakes.
Soon Tikal’s southeastern ally, Caracol, was
siding with the Snakes, as was Waka, a warlike
The reconstructed burial of a Snake king, thought
to be Claw of Fire, who died in 697, includes jade
and shell beads placed on a shroud and some of
the ceramics interred with him at Calakmul.
CONACULTA, INAH, MEXICO. PHOTOGRAPHED AT MUSEO ARQUEOLÓGICO DE CAMPECHE FUERTE DE SAN MIGUEL